Richard Beck selected as keynote speaker for two venues in summer 2012

Posted December 14, 2011

Dr. Richard Beck, professor and department chair of psychology at ACU, will be a keynote speaker at two venues this summer. He will speak in June at Streaming: Biblical Conversations from the Missional Frontier and then at the fifth annual Conference of Theology and Peace.

Theology and Peace is an organization interested in building and fostering more peaceable communities. Brian McLaren, popular Christian author and speaker, delivered the 2011 keynote. The 2012 conference will take place June 5-7 at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.

"My talk, entitled 'Purity & Pollution: The Psychology of Sacrifice and Scapegoating,' will focus on how purity and disgust categories are used to mask and facilitate social scapegoating," Beck said.

Streaming will be held June 18-21 at Rochester College in Rochester, Mich. The focus will be on topics related to the missional church with an eye to equipping church leaders.

"I'll be discussing, in conversation with leading biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, the psychology of missional failure – the social and psychological obstacles that get in the way of the church being people of welcome and hospitality," Beck said.